Simon Says: Daily Food Quote, September 21, 2012

Some sensible person once remarked that you spend the whole of your life in your bed or in your shoes. Having done the best you can buy shoes and bed, devote all the time and resources at your disposal to the building up a fine kitchen. It will be, as it should be, the most comforting and comfortable room in the house.–Elizabeth David, Slow Food, 1951

here was a British cookbook writer who, on her return from “exile” in Egypt after WW2, decided that action had to be taken with regard to the quality of food in Britain. She was outright hostile to second-rate cooking and the use of frozen, canned and out-of-season ingredients, and is, in many people’s mind, a precursor of the concept of Slow Food. In any case, she was a primary mover in bringing true traditional home cooking using quality ingredients back into the mainstream in Britain.

All her books are listed here, and most are still available at Book Depository or other online independent booksellers.

6 days agoby jonell_gallowayWe all have to let off steam from time to time. I do it through words, sometimes harsh, sometimes sweet; Venice does it through windows and steam-pipes. Hand-shaped bricks were laid onto this marshland over a thousand years ago and still stand, the alder wood foundation stakes digging deep to reach the bottom sands of this shallow lagoon. This wall tells a tall story, filled in over the centuries with newer bricks and stones, later covered with plaster, itself now crumbling with age, like family stories that change tones with the times and are embellished with black or white lace